Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/234

230 Godwin, Thomson, Hall, Ogilvie and Hodgskin. These men touched the most assailable spot of the new economic system that was arising. It was a system of exploitation, and their claim was that labour had a right to its whole produce. I am convinced that when the political and organising phase of the Socialist movement has been successfully finished and when Socialists will be compelled to lay down an economics and jurisprudence which will justify their programmes, they will pass behind Marx and establish a connection with the school of thinkers I have named. But these men left coteries, not a movement, behind them. The time was not ripe for the latter. Political strife distracted attention, and the magnificent field which opened up for British commerce obscured its exploitations and baffled every attempt that was made to organise the working-class revolt. The Chartist uprising blazed across the sky, but it was a meteor not a rising sun, and the British workers settled down to an allegiance to Radicalism and political reform, to trade unionism and co-operation.

The turning-point in the road came early in the 'eighties. In 1879 Henry George's Progress and Poverty was published and had an untold effect in turning men's minds to